from SCOTUSblog The Supreme Court’s December argument session will feature two of the highest-profile cases of the 2022-23 term: a free-speech claim by a website designer who opposes same-sex marriage and a case involving the power of state legislatures to set rules for federal elections. That news came with the release of the court’s December argument calendar on Tuesday. The justices will hear argument in 303 Creative v. Elenis, the case brought by Colorado website designer Lorie Smith, on Dec. 5. Smith wants to expand her business to create custom wedding websites, but she opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds […]
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The Problem of ‘Personal Precedents’ of Supreme Court Justices
from NYTs Supreme Court justices, like most people, like to appear to be consistent. No one wants to be thought to be a flip-flopper, an opportunist or a hypocrite. That means justices try not to disavow earlier legal views, even ones that appeared in dissents, in opinions they wrote as appeals court judges, in academic work, at their confirmation hearings and elsewhere. This impulse, which a provocative new article calls “personal precedent,” can be at odds with respect for precedent in the conventional sense. The force and legitimacy of such personal precedents has seldom been explored, and the rare scholars […]
Continue readingThe Perverse Consequences of the NCAA Ruling
from The Atlantic The Supreme Court has changed college admissions forever. The justices’ decision late last month allowing NCAA Division I football and men’s basketball programs to provide new educational incentives to student athletes created an overdue avenue for compensating student athletes in commercially lucrative sports, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds. And new rules the NCAA rolled out last week in response to a series of state laws allow student athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness without violating college sports’ amateurism rules. So far, the changes have been celebrated as a step toward greater equity. […]
Continue readingAmy Coney Barrett’s Judicial Philosophy Doesn’t Hold Up to Scrutiny
from The Atlantic During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles. Most famously associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia (for whom Judge Barrett clerked), this idea sounds simple and sensible: In determining what the Constitution permits, a judge must first look to the plain meaning of the text, and if that isn’t clear, then apply what was in the minds of the 55 men who wrote it in 1787. Period. Anything else is “judicial lawmaking.” In some cases, interpreting the Constitution […]
Continue readingAfter Ten Years, The Google vs Oracle API Copyright Mega-Battle Finally Hit The Supreme Court
from The Register The decade-long mega-battle between two of the world’s largest corporations, which will decide the future of software development, began its final showdown this morning. Yes, it was Google versus Oracle at the US Supreme Court, and two hours of wide-ranging, fast-paced legal argument: full of analogies, pointed questions, sharp responses, and virtually no missteps – it indicated just how much is at stake. At the heart of the case is this: Android, Google’s mobile operating system installed on billions of devices that contributes to making it one of the richest and most powerful corporations on the planet. […]
Continue readingSCOTUStalk Heads To The Ballot Box: The Supreme Court And The 2020 Election
from SCOTUSblog Ever since Bush v. Gore, the case that effectively decided the 2000 presidential race, the Supreme Court increasingly has been asked to intervene in fraught disputes over election procedures. Add in a pandemic, and the 2020 election season promises to be unprecedented. This week on SCOTUStalk, SCOTUSblog’s social media editor, Katie Barlow, joins Amy Howe to break down the court’s influence on the election. They survey major election-related rulings the justices have already handed down this summer and preview what role the court might play in the run-up to Election Day – and, potentially, the weeks afterward. Katie […]
Continue readingRuth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court’s Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87
from NYTs Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and a pioneering advocate for women’s rights, who in her ninth decade became a much younger generation’s unlikely cultural icon, died on Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. More here.
Continue readingSupreme Court Rules Georgia Can’t Put The Law Behind A Paywall
from ars technica A narrowly divided US Supreme Court on Monday upheld the right to freely share the official law code of Georgia. The state claimed to own the copyright for the Official Code of Georgia Annotated and sued a nonprofit called Public.Resource.Org for publishing it online. Monday’s ruling is not only a victory for the open-government group, it’s an important precedent that will help secure the right to publish other legally significant public documents. “Officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official […]
Continue readingJustices To Consider Constitutionality Of CFPB Structure
from SCOTUSblog The congressional commission that investigated the 2008 financial crisis concluded that the United States’ consumer-protection system was “too fragmented to be effective.” In response to that finding, in 2010 Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. The CFPB – whose website describes the bureau as a “U.S. government agency that makes sure banks, lenders, and other financial companies treat you fairly” – is led by one director appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a five-year term; once the director has been confirmed, the president can only remove […]
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